depending on the time of night and the year, the arc of Milky Way can
appear relatively low or relatively high in the sky. For observers
from about 65 degrees north to 65 degrees south on the Earth's surface
the Milky Way passes directly overhead twice a day

What happens and how does the Milky Way look like out of that range?
If it matters, consider also the all-summer light and the dark winter.

@astromax does that picture change among seasons?
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NiccolòDec 19 '13 at 19:31

Well the portion of the sky that you see changes with the season, but other than that it doesn't change (on time scales that we really care about).
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astromaxDec 19 '13 at 19:59

@astromax because at polar regions seasons really matters (you won't see any star all over the summer). Can you maybe link or post the same picture for the different seasons? That would be great!
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NiccolòDec 20 '13 at 15:23

2 Answers
2

On midnight, right around this time of year, the Milky Way will be in the zenith. Here is an XEphem rendering for the north of finland (65th latitude) for yesterday midnight (the brown outline marks the Milky Way):

You can also see this on photographs by finnish photographer Tommy Eliassen. He has many examples of this on his website. I won't put any in here, because I guess they are copyrighted, and not free to use.

This is an animated 24 hour version of the above sky map, which shows the rotation of the milkyway around the zenith:

Can you help me to read the map? I am not use to it. What I intuitively understand is that Milky Way is cutting the sky from North-East to South-West, right? So the difference with lower latitudes is that it kind of rotates instead of passing twice per day. That seems to contradict Michael post.. Would you say polar regions are good to observe the Milky way?
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NiccolòDec 19 '13 at 19:24

The map shows the sky above you. Easiest to understand if you lie down on the ground, head facing north and then holding the map in front of you. The zenith is in the middle of the map, north is where polaris is (i.e. top part of the map). East and west are reversed, because its an overhead map. So west is right, and east is left.
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ArneDec 19 '13 at 19:33

Ok, yes, like I did! So it does contradict Micheal, the Milky Way looks high in the sky.. Hum...
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NiccolòDec 19 '13 at 19:41